Hellebores

It is approaching the middle of December. Here on the coast of Southern Oregon, it is time for the Hellebores to bloom. Some of my favorite flowers, blooming in the cold.

I am still alive, still knitting!

Waiting for a new faster Internet connection to be installed, we will be geting "Wild Blue" satellite soon, should be about 10 times faster. With this dial-up, we are getting left in the dust and composing for the blog is getting slower.
But I have been busy:

The two shawls went to my two
Aunts in South Dakota. The giant slippers still need to be felted, as does the hat for my uncle Rudy that ended up WAY too big! The skeins of yarn are dyes with mushrooms, cedar bark, and alder berries.

And I can't move the pictures around to save my soul for some reason!

Diva is doing better all the time, but still gets limpy when we push her too hard.

Ravelry is keeping me way too busy as well, what a cool cool site!

Clue 1 of Chrysopolis Done!

FINALLY! Done with clue one! and it is quite pretty design if I do say so! I think I am finally getting into the rhythm of the knitting. If it weren't for those pesky things like laundry and meals, coulda been done earlier!

Miss Diva and continued Knitting!

Diva developed a terrible limp, bilaterally, when we got home from Tahoe. It seemed not to be related to exercise or activity. We took her to our local Vet who took x-rays and said that it looked like a defect of the cartilage in her right elbow and gave us a referral to a Vet in Portland who can do the surgery arthroscopically.
http://www.animalsurgeons.com/

Dr. McCarthy and his staff could not have been more professional or caring. Diva went for surgery two weeks ago today. She had cartilage removal of both elbows and shoulders. We have been keeping her quite quiet, not hard for a Bull Mastiff. We go for suture removal on Friday, and I think she is ready for more activity. It is nice, she no longer limps, but in reality, she is not walking much either. But that is NOT by her choice. Meanwhile, I am knitting up a storm. Amanda's sweater .
Finishing the embroidery on it seems to be taking forever, and I don't really know why. I have finished two shawls, my black MS3 and the "Syrian" from Victorian Lace.
And now I am working on the Secret of Chrysopolis as well as my version of Icelandic Lace from Knitting Daily. I am using all those fair-isle yarns I bought at such a good price and that I am beginning to realize I will never really create an actual fitted garment with.

Memo to self - just cause they are Wonderful colors - just a couple of skeins will become hard
to deal with in a stash!

My - Time Does Fly!

Back from Tahoe, a little tanner and somewhat chagrined from the plunge into fairly cold, deep water while learning how to STOP the kayak! I have finished the body of the "Syrian" shawl and found a wonderful edging to put on it.


It is from a 1989 Rowan/Brother Designer Machine Knitting Book by Stephen Sheard. The lace is from the pattern on page 93, done by Erika Knight. They provided the option for a hand knitted collar. The lace is "true" lace, i.e., patterning and yo's on every row. I like the fact that it is a 12 row pattern, fitting nicely into the 6 st pattern of the body of the shawl, and I think it will block out quite well. I decreased the amount of garter stitch sawtooth and added a row of faggots to enable joining.



My "Hanami" shawl is at a standstill. I am spinning the yarn for it and am about half through (490 yards of two ply so far!) I want to dye it eventually but am unable to spin any more yarn for a while. After reading a lot online and at the Schacht website, I finally perfected scotch tension to be able to spin the fine yarn I want. This spurred me on to purchase, at last, the smallest high speed whorl. And of course, (this IS a 20 year old wheel) the whorl doesn't fit. I emailed Schacht and they are going to alter it to fit my flyer as well as fine tune all my bobbins. So spinning on THAT wheel is out for a while. It is my "old reliable" - such a versatile wheel!

And - just to keep me occupied, the apple trees actually have apples this year, and I am drying apples like crazy. Kimberly's favorite!

On Vacation at Tahoe

I can't believe all the WPI's I brought to work on. As it is, the wonderfully easy and portable "Syrian" shawl from "Victorian Knits Today" fits the bill for knitting on the beach. Thank you Moni for the idea! You can get distracted and easily get right back to knitting. Yes, I stole that display idea from "Yarn Harlot".

Tahoe is wonderful, as always. Particularly now, since many California schools started this week and most of the crowds are gone. I always forget how very dry it is here, humidity of 37%. After these last 5 years on the Oregon coast, it is very bizarre to hang a wet towel on the porch and have it dry by morning!

I will be happy to get home however. Diva has developed a bad itchy area over her right shoulder, and is scratching it bigger and bigger.

I am hoping it is from leftover soap from her bath and not from anxiety about being drug 12 hours in a car to a strange place with visitors.

I also want to get home and finish spinning my yarn for "Hanami". On the day we left I received both new bobbins from Alden and they are slick!

But for now, I am gonna go and sit at the beach and knit. Later we will take Diva to Kings Beach to the dog friendly beach. I think she may need some "dog" time.

My Alternate MS3

I finished blocking my alternate version of "MS3" today. It ended up about 23" x 72". I used two entire skeins of JoJoLand fingering weight cashmere (I used my math skills and ended up with only 5 yards left of the 800!)

It is OK, though the "bees" violate my lace rule of having no hole big enough to get one's finger thru. The bees looks more like butterflies and I think I went overboard beading them. But, all in all, a very satisfying project. Can't wait to see how the real version (I am doing it in black) turns out.

Hard to photograph adequately, this is the best I can do.

Too Much Lace? Never!

I find I have become infatuated with lace of late. Here are the 4 WIP's. The black and white are both Mystery Stole 3. The black is lace merino and I plan to go with Melanie's asymmetrical design, though the eyelet row seems to disturb the flow of the design. The white cashmere one I am making into an oblong one with one pointed and one curved end. I so became sure the theme was honeybees that I am incorporating the honeybee pattern from Barbara Walker's second book, page 273. I spent much of the day designing the last half of the shawl and now can't wait to finish it. The blue triangular shawl is the Syrian Pattern, page 130 in "Victorian Lace Today". I read Moni's blog about how easy it was to knit and relaxing with it's memorable pattern. Two balls of KnitPicks alpaca/silk, you can't go wrong!

The giant crumpled brown mass is my circular shawl project. I purchased some CVM this spring (Cary - they are so close to you!) and had forgotten how wonderful the springy softness is. I started spinning some thinly for lace and then figured I could create my own circular lace shawl. This is to be a spinning "sampler" of sorts, for the FIRST time I am actually keeping track of how each succeeding skein of yarn was spun and plied. I am on the 10th skein and have finally perfected it, just enough twist for stitch definition. I found an obscure lace pattern in Susanna Lewis's lace book and incorporated the increases into the design itself, loosely using EZ's Pi formula. Aside from the obvious differences in the quality of the spun yarn, I washed and carded bit by bit, so they are all a different shade, I will have concentric colors. I NEVER have the patience to wash, card, or spin all at once. But - I only have about 20 more rows to go, but have been spinning it on my Alden Amos wheel, the flyer and favorite bobbin of which I just packed up and sent to him to have more bobbins made. What a lovely wheel.

The rose is my Mme. Isaac Perriere. So so fragrant, and yes, THAT screaming pink! I'd love to have it down here where I am writing about it, but haven't been able to figure out how to move pictures in Blogger. Besides, living in the the hinterlands, I can't TELL you what a strain dial-up is getting to be. We are being left in the dust!

Spent most of the day carding fleece for "Hanami". It took about 7-8 passes to blend it all, but the best part was that I remembered that I had bought the
duncan fine fiber brush in the past. I had Daniel put it on my carder, and it was slick. I have had it for about 4 years, and wish now I had used it before. Simply perfect for fine fleeces! Now - to spin all this. I always seem to bite off more than I can chew, it seems like alot - 8 fat batts of very fine stuff.

The next picture is of the last blooms of my rose "Isfahan", an old rose given to me by my friend, Annie just before she died. It is lovely, she would love to have seen it, and I suppose she does.

OOh OOh But there is still more!

I am currently participating in MS3. I love it and am totally inspired by it. I have purchased Melanie's Hanami and plan to spin my own yarn. I have about 15 pounds of merino in the grease that was brought home for me from Australia by Marguerite, a fellow nurse, about 15 years ago. She was a particularly ballsy, if uninformed, person and went directly to the exporter at the wharf. She told him what she wanted and he apparently was so blown away that he let her select whatever. She didn't have a clue about fleeces, but brought me home lovely stuff. Contrary to what you might read, it cleans up really nicely even now, no "hardening" of the grease. So - I washed the locks individually today and they have turned out quite nicely. I plan to blend this with cashmere raw fleece I bought years ago to spin, inspired by a garter stitch crayon colored scarf at a Maiden Lane boutique in San Francisco. (Well, THAT never happened.) And I plan to include some cultivated silk top and one ounce of a merino-silk-angora roving my sister bought for me from Woodland Woolworks years ago (what was I supposed to do with that?)
I have spun a sample, space dyed it and knit it up. A little too pink for me - I want more white spaces! This is supposed to commemorate cherry blossoms and I plan to give it to my dear cousin who works at the FAA in Washington!
And now about my carder - it is a Clemes and Clemes. Well worn, I have used it for everything from lincoln and adult mohair to the aforementioned merino, as well as for silk and angora. With careful determination, you can card ANYTHING!
Tomorrow about fine tuning my wheel!

First of August - Let's Begin!

I simply spend hours reading other's blogs and think "I'd like to show what I have been doing - knitting-spinning-gardening-hiking-weaving." Not to mention just watching and listening to the birds. Here are the mother/child wild turkeys that currently inhabit our neighborhood. WE also have the the voracious cowbirds who were, not by their choice, born to a VERY small lark. Noisy noisy, noisy. Picture later when I can get closer.

Knitting. Got the Knit-Picks "Shimmer" today to knit the Syrian Shawl from "Victorian Knits Today."